Cloud computing has supported a new borderless work world, enhancing information flow and open cooperation. This has enabled businesses to be more productive and has enabled remote work, particularly during the Covid epidemic, helping corporations to assure company continuity. While the cloud environment has many advantages for businesses, it has also created a slew of vulnerabilities for attackers to exploit.

Unauthorised Data Access

It is the most serious threat to cloud security. According to a new cloud security spotlight research, 53% of respondents consider unauthorised access via faulty access controls and employee credential misuse to be the most serious cloud security concern.

Unauthorised access occurs when individuals get unauthorised access to company data, networks, endpoints, devices, or applications. The good news is that poor access control may be addressed by combining security solutions with access management policies. Access to cloud apps can be blocked using Indusface’s Web Application Firewall based on IP, nations, GEO location, and other factors. It enables organisations to comply with data security rules by providing complete tracking, monitoring, and reporting of app access.

Tips for Avoiding Poor Access Management

Create a structure for data governance for all user accounts. All user accounts should be directly connected to centralised directory services such as Active Directory, which may monitor and remove access privileges.

Third-party security technologies can be used to frequently retrieve lists of users, privileges, groups, and roles from cloud service environments. Your security staff can then sort and analyse it.

Maintain logging and event monitoring techniques to detect unauthorised changes and strange activities.

Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Attacks

Another prevalent type of cloud strike that can be quite devastating. DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) is a type of attack that includes denying legitimate users access to online services by flooding them with malicious connection requests.

Tips for dealing with DDoS assaults in the cloud

Have too much bandwidth on your company’s internet connection. The more bandwidth you have, the more work hackers must put in to flood your connection.

Discover vulnerabilities in your system – use web application scanning tools to scan your network and system for flaws that can be used to launch DDoS assaults. Implement security procedures to address the security issues that have been identified.

Maintain a backup internet connection – a backup connection with a distinct pool of IP addresses gives an alternate way in the event that the primary circuit becomes overburdened.

Configure WAF rules to filter out malicious IP addresses – Create custom rules in your WAF firewall to monitor and filter traffic based on your needs.

Misconfiguration of the Cloud

Three-quarters of all cloud-based companies suffer from some form of cloud misconfiguration that compromises security. Common flaws include default passwords, insufficient access controls, uncontrolled permission controls, inactive data encryption, and many others. Many of these flaws are caused by insider threats and a lack of security knowledge.

Another method by which businesses establish vulnerabilities is by attempting to personalise their cloud usage through setting tweaks or plug-ins. These impromptu modifications can lead to configuration drift, which can lead to issues with availability, management, and security.

How to Solve the Cloud Misconfiguration Error

Learn about your Cloud – Learn about all of your cloud services’ services, settings, and permissions, and don’t forget to take advantage of integrated security features.

Change the credentials and permissions – thoroughly examine the default credentials and enable multi-factor authentication for added security.

Audit your cloud asset on a regular basis – Don’t expect that properly configured cloud settings will stay the same for a long period. Proper audits and monitoring can assist you in detecting misconfigurations.

Choose the proper security solutions – The top cloud security service providers, such as Indusface, can offer a comprehensive set of capabilities such as security management, threat detection, and intrusion prevention.

Data Breaches and Leaks

The loss of personal and sensitive information and data – both mistakenly and deliberately – is the most significant and critical cloud computing threat for organisations today. As more firms allow their employees to use personal devices for work without having a robust security policy, the risk of data breaches rises. Using personal devices to access storage services such as One Drive or Dropbox raises security concerns, especially when outdated operating systems are used. Insider threats are another source of critical information leakage. Storing sensitive data and passwords in plain text files makes them vulnerable if attackers gain access to them.

Because the cloud is a shared environment, a single vulnerability on the cloud exposes the entire environment to compromise, resulting in data breaches and loss.

Advice on How to Avoid Data Leaks

Encrypt Data – Sensitive data should not be stored in the cloud unless it is encrypted.

Change your password – Keep all of your passwords in a secure location. Make better password choices and enhance the frequency with which they are changed.

Set Permissions – Not all employees require equal access to your important files. Assign permissions based on a ‘need to know’ basis to prevent unauthorised access.

Educate your employees – Train your employees to avoid unwittingly releasing important information.

Unsafe API

The use of APIs is beneficial to organisations, but it is a headache for the security team.

APIs are intended to simplify cloud computing procedures, however they are not necessarily black and white. There is a grey area where APIs that are left unprotected can allow hackers to abuse confidential information. One of the leading reasons of cloud data breaches is insufficient API security. According to Gartner, APIs will be the most commonly used vector in cyber-attacks by 2022.

API Security Best Practises

Comprehensive authentication and authorization policies – To ensure API security, APIs should be developed with tokens, signatures, quotas, encryption, API gateways, and so on.

Web Application Firewalls apply web-based vulnerability exploit defence to cloud APIs.

Select a standard API framework – rely solely on APIs that have been designed with security in mind. Examine its security features and determine whether it is secure enough to incorporate third-party applications.

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